The Art Of Giving

I rolled with BB again tonight. We haven't rolled since I last wrote about him. Summer schedules.

He started out in rolling-with-newbie mode. But he quickly went to normal mode when I put him in a hold I learned at my friend's school a couple of weeks ago. It was fun tossing him around a bit, because he's a tad smaller than me. Of course, he's miles better, so he submitted me a couple of times, but overall we rolled for about 10 minutes straight. He complimented me a lot: I know a lot of passes that I didn't know last time, and he said something every time I pulled a new trick out of the bag.

New tricks. Some times it feels like the person who knows the last counter to your counter gets the win. Or, alternatively, the opponent knows the counter you weren't expecting, either because of your ignorance, or because of surprise. BJJ is one long chain of movement, one person responding to another, in an endless line of response. There are many gaps in my line, mostly in attack.

This week I trained Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Training smarter too, so I'm not dead exhausted at the end of each session. It all clicked when I rolled with teacher last Friday: roll smart, roll long time. The constant, frequent practices mean I get a lot of mental momentum. CC would say my nervous system is getting conditioned by training like this, conditioned to roll, and so it feels natural. I can still feel glaring gaps in my game, like when I get someone in a hold but am not skilled at finishing them off. But I'm beginning to feel like there's nothing more natural than to be on a mat, on my butt, rolling with a stranger.

Tonight, I was given the opportunity to roll with our teacher again. He's been calling all the white belts to roll with him for the last couple of weeks, but hadn't called me yet. Tonight, he had me working with three others; we were the four least experienced students in attendance. At almost three months I'd been training the longest; the others have been in class for only three weeks.

The game was simple. The first person to score points had to sit out. Passing the guard, taking the back, sweeps, anything that would count as points in a competition. I was first. Teacher was smiling, giggling, making faces, and I was finished before we started. I tried something, he did a sweep on me, and I was out. We cycled through like this once and it was my turn again. This time, he started to just give us his back as a starting position. I just went for a guillotine choke, and I calmly went into guard. But he had a knee at my tail bone, and everytime I pulled the choke, his knee was forced painfully into the bottom of my pelvis. I was executing nothing but a trap for myself. He passed my guard, and I was out.

While he cycled through us, I was amazed at how often he would let us use our own leverage to put ourselves in a submission hold. You read that correctly: we tied our own knots. And the little amount of energy he needed to expend to do it all. He could roll for hours like this. When we were particularly ignorant he would kind of lie there, dead like, or scratch his head while someone frantically tried a choke that would never work, or put his hands in someone's ears when they did something silly. Beyond making it fun, I was struck by how little one needed to do to defend, if you are skilled at the techniques of pure leverage.

No one could do the guillotine choke from his back, because of his great base, so I tried a completely different move, one that breaks the base of someone who gives you their back. It worked, and this time we rolled for a few minutes. Of course, that was because teacher wanted it to be a few minutes, but I got that the rolling went longer the more he was testing specific limits for each of us. For me, it was how to do the attack once I'd reached over his back, held him onto my chest while I rolled onto my back, and kept my legs hooked to his so he couldn't get away. I did like 50% of this correctly, but it fell apart when it came time to do the attack. He wheeled around, put me in a leg lock, started tickling my foot and laughing, and then got past my guard into a mount. I was out again.

I went back and did it a few times. The second time he defended right away, but we rolled even longer. The third time, I kept everything controlled, and he didn't defend against it, just let me do it again to see how far I could get. This time I kept his legs spidered up and went for the rear naked choke. Once my arms were in I got my legs hooked over his and started to spread him out. I had him held but couldn't finish the choke; he had his hand simply placed in a position that kept me from using my strength to finish the choke (illustrating, of course, that I need to use leverage, not strength, to get a submission). He reached for one of my hands, told me to put it in a different position on my other arm, and then to execute the choke. I did this, and he tapped. It was hardly a submission, but it was incredibly instructive. In the course of an hour of a few minute rolling sessions, he'd stepped me through a couple of great attacks, and I got to see others learn new stuff too.

After I did this he asked me to roll with a few specific people. Some more experienced, some less. It was the first time he asked me, in the middle of a class, to work with specific people. To each person I took his easy, relaxed style, and from there was able to roll without getting exhausted. I'm getting better; I was only submitted by my fellow white belts a couple of times, and a blue belt only submitted me once. I taught some of the newbies some moves. I also learned a few tricks at a different school, while training with a friend in another state, and a couple of those I was able to execute successfully too.

I enjoy the pace of this type of learning: it's all learning with the body. Like chess, with endless moves and countermoves, except that the thinking is fused with the movements you make. You can't put it into language, and you can't sit and think to practice. Every class is a learning experience, even when I make the same dumb mistakes over and over, because I'm there moving and rolling. And doing a few chokes.

Today I had an appointment with CC. He had moved back to NYC last month, and we wanted to catch up on each other's lives.

His first words "Dude, you're still big!". I've lost a lot of weight since starting BJJ, so I wasn't prepared for his reaction (this is a guy who can tell by how I look if I've skipped drinking some fruit juice in the morning). "You kept all your muscle, good job". I'm happy with how I look right now, but hearing CC's compliments meant a lot to me. It's an expert opinion.

We had a relaxed conversation, even though we were meeting on the sidewalk. He'd moved back from a state far away; my business is doing well and I'm in love. Then the talk turned to working out, training, rolling.

Being with him reminded me how much I missed talking to him. Although the trainer who succeeded him was good, he was no CC. I never had the urge to write anything he said down. CC was coaching me on the kind of weight training I need to do to supplement my Brazilian Jiujitsu, and I felt the urge to record everything he said again. He's brilliant at creating workouts for specific tasks. I told him so.

I got rid of my last trainer when I started BJJ training. I didn't want the expense, and I wasn't playing the gain-weight game anymore. I didn't need the raft, either. But seeing CC, being with his enthusiasm for all things fitness, gave me a rush that I'd forgotten about. He also coached me on what other skills I needed to learn before I could compete MMA, advice that wasn't what I would have anticipated, but was pure genius when he said it. I also got that he really wants me to get good at it.

He hugged me no fewer than three times in our goodbye. I hugged him the first time and was all 'lata bro' with him, but he kept saying how good it was to see me and kept going back for another hug. I was left feeling that CC was no longer my ex-trainer; he'd become a friend.

Two weeks ago, I caved. I started reading the Harry Potter series. I resisted it since they came out and everyone was raving about it. However, on the day the last book came out, I was suddenly struck by the urge to read the whole thing at once: no 'waiting a couple of years for the next book to come out' for me. That, and the prospect of starting yet another gloomy and suicidal Yukio Mishima tome didn't fulfill my mood for some light summer reading.

The first three books were read in 36 hours. I spent two days on book four. I spent five days on book five. Taking a little Harry Potter break before I crack open number six.

One of the joys of reading the books is that the movies finally make sense. Goblet of Fire was a big blur before I read the book. Now it's full of visual references, subtle plot changes, huge plot changes, and great special effects. Some of the characters in the movies are brought to life by some genius casting. My favorite character in the books is Snape (when was the last time a book inspired a favorite character in me?); the casting of the brilliant Alan Rickman in this role only deepens my affection.

The core story is irresistable: a poor boy from the suburbs turns out to be marked for greatness, in a world so fantastic as to be inconceivable to the suburbs. I grew up in semi-rural Ohio in the late 70s and early 80s, when Han Solo was my hero, and my grassy back yard backing onto a great woods seemed perfectly aligned with the desert planet of Tatooine. I only had to look around enough to see the spaceship that would carry me to the stars. Of course, Harry Potter draws from this reference, as well as many others. But the books stand on their own, the story always with a very dark edge, and a complexity well beyond a children's read.

My favorite passages in the books (besides the Snape sections) are those in which Harry conjures the Patronus Charm. In order to do this, he need summon the happiest memory he can think of; when he does, a protective force appears (in the form of a guardian animal) to chase dementors away. I find myself recreating and practicing this moment, when a deeply felt, instantly summoned happy memory reverses certain death into rescue.